Martha's Favs Mondays: Tongs

I have to say that tongs are the second most hard working tool in my kitchen (with the first being my silicone spatula). They're very useful for handling meat and for cooking pasta in a pan. For example, you can easily flip a piece of chicken breast in a pan with perfect control. You can also treat them as another pair of hands to keep your hands clean - use them to drench meat in flour & egg to create a coating or crust, and most importantly, use them to avoid cross contamination when dealing with raw meat. Here's another application I haven't tried but have seen on TV: use the handles for squeezing citrus.

Image from Amazon.com

The Oxo stainless steel tongs work perfectly for me. I have absolutely no complaints. However, I am looking to make another addition to the tongs family with a silicone head version that won't hurt my non-stick or stainless steel pans. Should I or shouldn't I?

Chinese Food Snob

Yes, I am a Chinese food snob, but only because I know what real Chinese food is. While I'm a fan of Martha Stewart, I raised my eyebrow when she and Lucinda Scala Quinn cooked Chinese food, or shall I say, American Chinese food. Their demonstration of potstickers and broccoli with oyster sauce a few days ago may pass the American Chinese food standard, but not mine.


My beef with their potstickers is that they were anemic - we use more filling than that. Were they afraid they couldn't seal the dumplings or is budget tight on the show? Also, boiling them before you brown them in a pan (as opposed to just cooking them in a pan with no boiling involved) results in a less desirable dumpling texture. And broccoli with oyster sauce? When we make greens, they are either sauteed with garlic or blanched then drizzled with oyster sauce - we don't make any brown sauce.


Image from Martha Stewart

Farewell, Gourmet

Most foodies should know by now that Condé Nast has announced that it will no longer publish Gourmet magazine due to financial woes. I just paid for 2 years of subscription to the magazine (boo!). I'm a proponent of Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie on public television, a wonderful series that showcases food and cooking around the world, from exploring cooking methods like the slow food movement, showing how locals are preserving traditions, to uncovering exotic ingredients. I hope they won't shut down the show too.

Vegetarian Pasta

I don't cook purely vegetarian meals, so when it came to my mother's (a vegetarian for 2 years now) birthday celebration meal at home a few weeks ago, I started scratching my head. I wasn't going to make the elaborate mock meat that is so commonly found in Chinese vegetarian cuisine. My brother suggested pasta primavera, but I found it sorta boring. Add to it that my father doesn't like cheese or cream, ingredients called for in most primavera recipes. I wanted an easy but tasty recipe. Then a light bulb went off in my head - combine my oven roasted tomato pasta with other vegetables you would find in a pasta primavera.

It was fairly simple. I popped in the tomatoes to roast in the oven, cooked the remaining vegetables in a pan in the meantime, and brought every thing together at the end. My brother was surprised at how tasty it came out. I liked the slight crunchiness that the carrots retained. My mother, being the hard to please woman that she is, noted that the dish was too sweet for her taste. Why would I temper with vegetables' inherent sweetness if mother earth made them that way? Every year, I swear to myself that I will never cook or bake for her again, and every year, I get suckered into it. Anyways, here's the recipe to what was in my head a success:

Vegetable Pasta with Oven Roasted Tomato
Serves 6

1 yellow squash
1 zucchini
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
2 medium carrots, peeled
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
Oven Roasted Tomato
cooked spaghetti (very al dente), enough for 6 (about 1 1/2 package)
1/2 cup reserved pasta water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Cut the squash, zucchini and bell peppers into strips, about 3in in length and 1/2in in width. Cut the carrots into slightly thinner strips.

Start the Oven Roasted Tomato. In the meantime, heat up the olive oil in a 12in saute pan. Add the onions and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Season with salt. Add garlic and saute until fragrant. Add carrots and saute about 5 minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables, oregano and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 10 minutes.

Add the Oven Roasted Tomato to the vegetables. Let them cook together for about 2-3 minutes, then add the spaghetti and reserved pasta water. Cook for 5-10 minutes, or until spaghetti is al dente. Add butter to finish the sauce and garnish with parsley.

Martha's Favs Mondays: Ice Cream Scoop

I love ice cream, so it only makes sense that I love ice cream scoops right? Actually, I eat right from the container with a spoon, which isn't too smart in terms of portions control. The ice cream scoop I love is also called a cookie scoop because of the tool's release function that can be used for ice cream, cookie dough, batter, etc. Not only is it easy to use, it also saves tons of time - no more making cookies using spoons!

The ice cream scoop is my latest acquisition. It had been on my wish list for the longest time, and now I have three in total, each in different sizes. I recently used my large scoop for waffle batter, and it worked perfectly. I am now totally in love with the tool!

Image from Amazon.com

The large scoop I used from Oxo worked like a dream. The sticky batter released easily in one quick motion, and the non-slip padding was so comfortable. I've tried handling other all-stainless steel scoops in the store and I wasn't crazy about their handles. I knew that if I had to make dozens of cookies with the scoop, I would definitely want a handle that is easy on my hand. So far so good!

How to Avoid a Rookie Mistake with Soup Dumplings

I burned my mouth on Joe's Shanghai's soup dumplings last week, and my mouth is still paying the price. It was all worth it, but I will definitely stick to my strategy by the book next time and resist the temptation of immediately devouring the dumplings. Just to clarify a bit, I am by no means a rookie when it comes to eating soup dumplings!

Here's my strategy to eating these soup filled dumplings:

1. Wait up to a minute after the piping hot dumplings arrive at your table
2. Place the dumpling onto a spoon to catch any soup that may escape; navigate the dumpling with chopsticks
   
3. Drizzle black vinegar on the dumpling
4. Bite the top of the dumpling (not the side) to release the steam and to keep the soup within the dumpling
   
5. Take a small sip of soup from the opening to test the dumpling's temperature
   
6. Proceed to biting into the dumpling
   

I hope my tips will save you lots of pain. Have a happy Friday!

Look What I Got My Hands On?

I didn't know when I would get to see and taste macarons from Laduree ever again. Luckily, my brother's gf just brought back a box of these in different flavors from Paris! I took some glam shots for these beauties before I devoured them. Notice the slight sheen on them when they're kissed by the light, the classic macaron feet, and the delicious filling in the cookie.




I had their raspberry, lemon, and what I believe to be jasmine. They had a slightly crunchy exterior (no crust separation that I've seen in other macarons), equal filling ratio to each cookie layer (thickness of the filling is same as the top or bottom of the cookie), buttery filling (depending on which flavor you have; some have fruit fillings), and tiny bits of ground almond in each bite.

Oh Laduree, how long must I wait to have you again?